Tag Archives: Mennonite Girls Can Cook

Good Fences

How to make a chain link fence more interesting…

I saw this wall just off the pier in Huntington Beach.

I’m sharing these fences from California that I took in October on Good Fences #87 with TexWisGirl.

We are enjoying electricity again after being without it for 24 hours. We have started our thankfulness early! We are thankful the temperatures were mild for this outage instead of freezing. Before the power went out I baked Snickerdoodles and if you click over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook you’ll see the recipe I used.

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I’m glad I didn’t do my Thanksgiving food shopping early. Hard to believe Thanksgiving is a week from today! I’m not sure what day I’ll be making our turkey. We are invited to our friends home on Thanksgiving day. My brother and his lovely wife will be flying up for a week and will spend the holiday with us. What are your plans this year?

Pork Chops!

Click on over to the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog to see the recipe from Pat at Mille Fiori Favoriti let me share of her family favorite Pork Chop Casserole.

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Being raised semi Kosher my mom never made anything using Pork products. We have embraced the vision that Peter had with the sheet coming down. We now enjoy some pork products but they still aren’t my first choice except for bacon! I’m learning and we do well with smoked pork shoulder and ribs!

Summertime in Canada…

Who knew several years ago that we would become familiar with the roads and back roads in Abbotsford and Chilliwack Canada? God knew and we had another fun adventure on Sunday meeting up with seven of the Mennonite Girls and their husbands.

We started with a short hike to Cascade Falls to see and experience the new suspension bridge.

 

 

Marg and John would meet up with us later for dinner.

This is Judy’s photo of the new suspension bridge. I forgot to take one. Thanks for letting me steal it, Judy.

 

 

I didn’t get two of the couples shots because I was using their camera’s and phones to take the photo for them.

After our time at Cascade Falls we traveled back to Hatzic Lake where Anneliese and H. hosted all of us for our potluck.

 

Lovella brought this beautiful bouquet from the flowers blooming in her garden!

We enjoyed the most delicious meal. Everything was fresh and homemade including the buns that Anneliese baked. Chilliwack corn fresh from Marg’s farm again verifying why everyone agrees that Chilliwack corn is the best! Lovella’s potato salad made from her farm eggs and potatoes from her garden. Kathy’s coleslaw that topped my pulled pork sandwich was perfect. Bev’s very fresh salad of watermelon, blueberries, cucumber, feta and mint. I forgot to take a photo of the cheesecake I brought and of the Peaches and Cream pies that Judy brought for dessert.

It was a lovely evening on the lawn beside the lake getting caught up in person and sharing stuff like books we’ve read and lots of things that made us laugh or moan. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we do not take this friendship circle for granted and we acknowledge that God brought us together and it is good as He is good!

Dear and I made it home by midnight after a 25 minute wait at the border crossing.

Banana Coffee Cake

Click on over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook to get my recipe for this Banana Coffee Cake! My family says it’s moist and delicious. It’s also a great recipe for using up that one ripe banana that is left from the bunch!

Here’s what losing fifteen pounds looks like on my face. The photo on the left is from April 18th and the photo on the right is from June 3rd. I’ve kind of hit a wall at this point but am happy with what I have been able to de-fluff before the wedding coming up in just seventeen days!

Today Dear and I are working outside again. He has a small section of the siding to finish painting and then we are going to clean up the planter on that side of the house and level out an area to store our trash cans out of sight. I have lots of before and afters to share in the future!

It’s cooling off a little today in the Seattle area. How goes it in your neck of the woods?

 

Weekend Work and Play!

We have had some nice dry and warm weather a few days in a row and what does that mean at this old house? It means it’s time to continue our projects. Dear spent much of Saturday taking the old vertical siding off the back of the house. This side of the house is the last side that needs horizontal siding. See that huge Rosemary bush behind Dear?

My job on Saturday morning was to trim it way back so Dear could work around it. The Rosemary scent was so strong we both felt a little woozy from it.

I did a few more chores out in the yard while Dear worked on the prep work for the new siding.

Our kids arranged a meal out for Mother’s Day on Saturday evening. I’ve mentioned before that I’m de-fluffing right now for our son’s wedding the end of June but for Mother’s Day I threw away the calorie counter. It was time to feast. I enjoyed a beet salad and Dear enjoyed a Bleu Cheese salad.

The six of us enjoyed steak, chicken, and halibut with some tasty sides.

Better than the food was the time we had together talking about the recent events in our lives. We missed our son and his fiance who live in the eastern part of our state across the Cascade mountains. We will celebrate with them in a couple of weeks when Dear and I head east to wrap up some details for the wedding.

On Sunday (Mother’s Day) we went to church and then we loaded up the truck bed with things we needed to take to the dump. We dumped about 1400 pounds of old siding, stone pavers, old wood, etc. It was my first time at the dump and it was an interesting experience. I cracked up about my Mother’s Day experience and Dear commented that he is always ready to give me a new experience in life.

Bad news…tomorrow I get to have another fun dental event (sarcasm intended). I’m going to have a tooth extracted that is causing gum infection problems. It’s the same tooth that they put a crown on in January. What a waste. Now I get to decide if I want to go through the trauma (for me) of having an implant. Feel free to share your experiences with similar issues and your advice!

Good news… going back to my de-fluffing plan is that I have dropped 10 pounds! This success keeps me motivated to stay on track and continue losing for the wedding.

If you are a mother I hope you enjoyed the weekend and that you were celebrated. Here’s a prayer for Mothers that I shared on the MGCC blog on Sunday.

 

Lunch in La Conner and Tulips!

This post is mostly about tulips and daffodils but we ladies (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) did enjoy lunch in La Conner after we tiptoed through the tulips and daffodils. So I’m linking to ABC Wednesday for L is for Lunch with the ladies in La Conner! Thank you to Mrs. Nesbitt and the ABC team!

Seven out of ten of the girls were able to meet up for a few hours in the Skagit Valley of Washington State. Six of the girls had to cross the border from Canada into Washington State. I live in Washington State so I just drove North for a little over an hour to meet up.

You can call these rows of tulips but since we are on the letter L we can call them lines of tulips.

When us girls are together there are lots of photos taken.

Such lovely landscapes!

You can look at lots of varieties of tulips at the gardens open to the public like Roozengaarde and Tulip World.

Other flowers besides tulips are planted in the gardens. These lavender colored hyacinth blooms are so pretty paired with yellow blooms.

We love each other and laugh a lot when we get together.

I’ll add my Bible verse for the letter L…

You will encounter lots of mud if you want to walk out to the fields of tulips or daffodils so mud boots are a good idea to lug with you and make sure you bring a plastic bag to put them in when you are done and put your clean shoes on.

It really is amazing to have this area in Washington State to enjoy and to rival the tulip production of Holland.

God Loves Me…

It’s good for me to look at all the ways God loves me and blesses me week in and week out. This past week my cup overflowed. Here are five things that filled my cup this week…

Living in the Seattle area with all it has to offer including a wonderful ferry system to take us away to new places to explore.

Comfortable spaces to stay that I don’t take for granted.

Good food and drink plopped in front of me is always a treat!

God’s creation in a beautiful setting to explore and marvel at. I will share a post from the Bloedel Reserve soon.

My cup was full from a wonderful weekend getaway with Dear and then on Monday I met up with 6 of the Mennonite Girls Can Cook at the Tulip fields with a nice lunch afterwards. Now my cup was overflowing. I will share more photos from the tulip fields later.

I said I had my Friday’s Fave Five that I’m linking up with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story with but I’d like to add one more blessing from afar.

My father, Moisi or Moses has re-discovered his love for jig-saw puzzles and it’s nice for him to be able to enjoy this activity. For those of you that have been following my updates on my pop, he is now living with my oldest sister and her husband. They are taking very good care of him and his loneliness has lessened. He is eating a whole lot better, too, thanks to my wonderful sister.

As you look back over this past week what do you count as blessings?

Every Good Gift…

It’s Friday again and I’m joining Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for Friday’s Fave Five. So many good gifts come to us to enjoy and here are five from this past week that were perfect.

2015-02-01 Super Sunday6We had our second annual Super Sunday at church and it was so fabulous. Two of our pastors went head to head with short sermons on the great Comebacks in the Bible. In the end Jesus’ Comeback from Death had us all cheering. The perfect ending to the sermon. My church, pastors, and staff are a gift.

10945612_10205969125695521_2137270504244193458_nFor our afternoon festivities after church Dear had ribs in the smoker that came out just right. A great meal is a gift I enjoy and enjoying it with our daughter Katie and son in law Andrew made it perfect.

 

10437688_10205867108578790_4313922370450234755_nOur two sons were able to spend the weekend together and I love the photos they send my way. They had a nice snowy hike out the door of our son Dan’s home in Eastern Washington. It’s a good gift to Dear and me that our sons love each other.

310005_585390848160419_526762518_nThese girls (Mennonite Girls Can Cook) are a gift from the Lord to me and every week we share our joys, struggles, triumphs, and failures with each other holding each other up in prayer and giving each other encouragement. This gift of friendship is straight from the “Father of lights”.

1959399_10205999747661051_7491996857274709490_nJosh and Laura gifted me these cool ABC verse cards and I display one card each week so I can see it and work on learning the verse. I’m on the letter e. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17) Since I’m a visual learner this gift was perfect to help me learn and retain the 26 verses included.

What gifts did you receive this week that brought some joy and light into your world?